


Loki Goes to School (Peter & Loki Series)

by e_n_silvermane



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Other, but it is of course worth a read, everyone's v protective, may be some continuity errors also, request!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:34:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23605378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/e_n_silvermane/pseuds/e_n_silvermane
Summary: School life has become increasingly miserable for Peter, which Mr. Stark decides to resolve by adding a Norse god to the mix. It could be babysitting. It could be bodyguarding. It could be moonlighting as Peter's second cousin on his mother's side. Whatever it is, Peter doesn't really know, and also doesn't know what shenanigans will occur when Loki meets MJ and Ned. What he does know is that it's... going to be a long day.(Also a request from Ana+Florencio! :) )
Relationships: Loki & Peter Parker
Comments: 8
Kudos: 108





	Loki Goes to School (Peter & Loki Series)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ana+Florencio](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Ana%2BFlorencio).



> Hey guys! Long time no see, huh? Or... long time no write, haha. Sorry about that. It's hard to get inspiration when you're working like a dog and sleeping like a cat all the time. Plus, some stuff in my life popped up that I had to deal with. But no problemo - I was granted some time off to get this done! Happy Easter, everyone :) Enjoy!

As with many strange situations in Peter’s life, it all started with a particularly horrible day.  
Because he’d spent almost all night on his “Spidey-patrol”, and thus stopped an armed home invasion (which meant he then had to clear everything up with the cops), he was terribly tired. The bags beneath his eyes and the mental fog of two hours of sleep caught up to him in third period, where he had a math test and remembered how to do maybe half of the things on it. At best he’d earn a C, which was not what he’d been hoping for. Peter wasn’t looking forward to explaining his grade to Aunt May, even though he knew she would be more disappointed than angry. She was one of those sorts of people. Somehow, though, her disappointment was worse.  
No, Peter wasn’t looking forward to that.  
And then Flash Thompson happened. Of all the merciless things to do… of course Peter should have known not to fall asleep during lunchtime. But it wasn’t really his fault! He just nodded off while reading through his English essay for the 10th time, with the faint knowledge that Ned and MJ were still waiting to get their meals. He didn’t wake up when the tip of a black marker snaked its way gently across the bridge of his nose, nor when the school’s tuna casserole became quite closely acquainted with his hair in several glue-textured spikes. In fact, Peter was only revived from his deep sleep when the entire cafeteria suddenly seemed to surge with laughter.  
Peter opened one hazel eye lazily, to be met with the alarming sight of Ned panicking and running in his direction, Flash laughing, and MJ looking like she was about to commit the homicide of the century.  
“Oh, lighten up, Michelle,” Flash cackled. “He’s fine. I don’t even think he’s awake yet.”  
At that moment, Ned ran over to Peter and began to shake his shoulders like he was ridding him of the devil. “Peter! Peter, you have to wake up!”  
“What?” Something was wrong with his head, but he couldn’t quite place it. It was almost… heavy? Sticky? He reached a hand up to his hair but Ned pushed it back down to his side.  
“You don’t want to know, trust me. We just need to get you out of here. Before your reputation is shredded even further.” While MJ chewed Flash’s ear off to the amusement of several others, Ned dragged a bleary-eyed Peter to the boy’s bathroom.  
“Head in the sink,” his friend directed. Peter obeyed with a sick feeling in his stomach.  
Ice cold water crept over his scalp and he shivered, suddenly becoming very aware of the little peas and pieces of tuna and noodle swirling into the drain. Oh, how he would have liked to land a right hook on Flash’s smirking rat face—but for now he had to sit and sigh and be solemnly grateful for Ned, who was now raking hand soap through his painfully knotted hair.  
A loud squeak reverberated around the room from the door opening and several light footsteps followed. A pair of ragged Converse stopped near the edge of the sink where Peter could just barely see out of the corner of his eye, and MJ’s voice filled his ears.  
“How is he?”  
“Awake,” Ned offered. “I’m not sure he’s aware of the- the gravity of the situation.”  
“Hm.”  
“Flash got me, didn’t he,” Peter said miserably. “Tuna casserole and what else?”  
“Well, he did draw a dick on your face. There is that.” Ever the stoic one, MJ pushed Peter further into the sink and began to scrub at his forehead and the curve of his nose. Ned backed off a bit, chewing the inside of his lip nervously.  
When Peter was finally allowed to dry off his hair with a meager supply of paper towels and look in the mirror with a grimace, he almost wished he had skipped school entirely to sleep at home. His hair was alright, just damp, still sticky near his hairline, but the Sharpie decorating the space between and slightly above his eyes was still quite prevalent in the nastiest sort of way.  
“How nice it would be to be a rock,” He said to himself. “A smooth little pebble on the beach. I wouldn’t have to deal with this. Wouldn’t that be nice? Oh, to be a little rock, warmed by the sun…”  
“He’s losing it.” Ned sighed. “Sorry, Peter. If I was a warlock and could turn you into a pebble on the beach, I would.”  
“Thanks, Ned.” Peter said, staring in the mirror with a focused intensity, as if he could will the phallic symbol away.  
“Okay, well.” MJ caught both of them with her piercing gaze, and pulled a few clouded bottles and what looked like little teardrop cakes from her pocket. “Lucky for you, I know how to fix a pretty good concealer. All you have to do is hold still.”  
Peter decided then that his friends were the light of his life and told them periodically through the rest of the day that he was thankful to have them—to which MJ rolled her eyes and Ned smiled kindly and knocked him on the shoulder, mentioning something like “it’s what friends do”. Still, the glowing presence of his two most beloved people didn’t quell the snickers from other students who saw him and recalled the events of lunch. At the end of the day, he trudged up to his room and convinced his aunt that he really was very tired and needed to sleep before anything else. And it was true. Nothing could be more exhausting than having to deal with one of those days.

“So that’s what happened,” Peter finished, pushing around a small piece of metal on the table, unwilling to meet Mr. Stark’s glaring eyes. The man could be awfully intimidating when he wanted to.  
“Kids these days.” His mentor muttered with the fiercity of the Earth’s boiling molten core. “I have half a mind to walk down there myself-”  
“Oh, you don’t have to do that. I’m okay, really! See?” Peter held out his arms and gave his most winning smile. “A-OK! Not a scratch on me! MJ even got the Sharpie off. I’ll tell you what, the nail polish remover kind of burned, but it sure worked!”  
“Mhm.” Mr. Stark seemed kind of distracted, but Peter thought that was probably normal for him. “Hey, on a semi-unrelated topic, how would you like for ol’ Reindeer Games to be your babysitter for a week?”  
The little piece of metal Peter had been tapping absentmindedly gave a start and skittered away from him across the table. Mr. Stark calmly collected the blue spider-like machine and placed it in a shiny, taffeta-lined case, while Peter tried to decide whether this was a good thing. “Loki? Follow me everywhere? Is this some sort of punishment you’ve thought up for him?”  
“Well...” Mr. Stark’s tortoiseshell orange sunglasses gleamed in the late afternoon sunlight coming through the window, and he turned his gaze on the boy, who was at best mildly concerned. “Not exactly. But if it makes you feel better, kid, we’ll call it that.”

Loki was in the middle of acquiring some much-needed beauty sleep when a bodiless voice instructed him calmly to wake up.  
“Master Loki,” the voice, which was of a soothing masculine variety, spoke. “Time to awaken. It is seven o’clock, and if you will recall, Master Stark told you last night that he would send for you in the morning.”  
“Five more minutes,” Loki muttered sorely, not unlike a disgruntled teenager being woken up early on the weekend by his parents.  
“Just five, Master Loki.” JARVIS went quiet, and Loki savored the silence greatly, falling back into a dreamless daze.  
“It has been five minutes.”  
“It has not!”  
“It has.” The voice intoned politely. “Please ready yourself for the day. You will be accompanying Master Parker to school.”  
“Oh, that’s unfair.” Loki mumbled to himself as the door to his cell unlocked and he stalked down the hall to the communal 4A-floor bathroom. “Get to see the spiderling, have to wake up early. Get to go outside, have to look presentable. Well…” And he talked himself through showering, combing his hair, brushing his teeth until they shone pale blue, and finding that a sleek black suit had mysteriously been left outside the bathroom door. As he dressed and finished fastening the last slim onyx button on his collar, the soothing voice returned.  
“Doctor Strange has instructed me to tell you that a small amount of your seidr will be returned in order to provide a sufficient cloaking device for the day ahead.”  
“Goody.” The tall man clapped his hands together with sarcasm and felt, suddenly, strong and energetic like he once had been. Escape was usually the first thing on his mind when Doctor Strange allowed him some small bit of seidr for one reason or another, but now the only thing crossing his mind was Peter. The spiderling had been dealing with recurring “people issues” as of late. Loki had no idea what that entailed exactly, but he did know that Stark had come up with the brilliant idea of sending him to a Midgardian school to be a personal guard for Peter, who had started showing up at the compound with mysterious bruises that he would say nothing about. And for once, he agreed with the snarky billionaire: the spiderling must be protected. At whatever cost.  
A slow inhale, a slow exhale, and his skin filtered into that soft ivory that he had been missing so sorely. With a familiar pair of glittering green cat’s eyes, he glanced and smiled up at the ceiling where JARVIS would take notice of him from a security camera. “I am ready.”  
“Excellent. Master Parker is waiting on the first floor in the lobby. Have a wonderful day, Master Loki.”  
JARVIS fell silent, and Loki strode smoothly down the hall to the open elevator for a ride down to where his friend was waiting.  
“How have you been?” was the first question out of Peter’s mouth, despite the Norse god wanting to ask him the same thing. For a moment, it stumped him, but he replied anyway.  
“Mediocre. Waiting for something exciting. But that should be of no concern today, young one. Mr. Stark has promised me a fair bounty for the head of anyone who dares to bother you.” The tall man smiled thinly, and laughed a little at how the brown-haired boy paled.  
“Uh,” Peter stuttered for a moment. “Um. Please don’t kill anyone at my school…?”  
“Spiderling, surely you’ve heard of a ‘joke’?”  
The high schooler noticed how his friend’s glass green eyes seemed to gleam with slight concern. “Yeah, no, haha, that’s funny,” Peter laughed nervously. “Um, we should start walking… to… the bus stop. But seriously. Please don’t kill anyone.”  
“Not unless you say so.”  
Peter sighed. Today… would certainly be a very, very long day.  
The walk to the bus stop was short enough, though it was punctuated by the spiderling’s insistence on picking up every aluminum can and piece of garbage and placing them in the correct receptacles, paired with his excitement at kicking every little pebble that was unfortunate enough to be in his way. Loki watched him with some mild amusement and even punted a few little rocks into the gutter himself. It was only when the bus pulled up, wheezing and squealing, to the curb that Peter got it in his head to mention his friends to Loki.  
“There’s Ned- he’s coming down the sidewalk there,” Peter pointed to a flailing figure in the distance, who was undoubtedly running as fast as he could, which was not really fast at all. “He probably just had breakfast really late, but he’ll catch up, Mr. Lee always waits for him. Ned’s a really good guy, you’ll like him. And MJ’s in a few stops, so you’ll get to see her soon, she’s… well, she’s funny. And kind of mean, but nice once you get used to her, I guess.” He paused. “And these are both people that you should not kill.”  
“Duly noted.” Loki said dryly, wondering if perhaps his joke had gone a bit far.  
The dirt-smeared yellow bus creaked and howled as if its doors opening were the worst of arthritic pains, and Peter waved hurriedly to the bus driver and leapt up the stairs two at a time, to explain who the tall man was and how he was supposed to come along as a visitor to the school. About five minutes into his long-winded explanation, Mr. Lee, disgruntled and sighing, waved both of them onto the bus as Ned ran up the steps and nearly collapsed on the gritty floor.  
Mr. Lee furrowed his bushy white eyebrows and grumbled, “Pull yourself together, kid, you’ve got three months left.”  
“Yes, Mr. Lee.” Ned gasped from his unexpected morning sprint and tossed himself into one of the first seats he saw. Peter slid into the one behind him and motioned for Loki to sit on the aisle side of his seat, which the Norse god did promptly.  
“Hello, young man. It’s nice to meet you. Peter tells me you are an affable companion.” Loki directed the statement at Ned, who suddenly noticed them with a series of nervous glances from Peter to Loki, Loki to Peter, and back again.  
“Um,” Ned said.  
“This is my cousin!” Peter exclaimed suddenly. “On my mom’s side- uh, second cousin, that is.”  
Ned gave Loki a once over, and decided that he was quite strange, but all right. “Nice to meet you too. What’s your name, sir?”  
“Leonard Seppe.” Loki extended his hand with a slight flourish and smooth smile. “You may call me Leon.”  
Ned shook his hand with that confused look on his face, looking at Peter as if to say, really?  
Peter just sank lower in his seat and waited wistfully for MJ’s stop to come soon, which it did, though not soon enough.  
The 16 year old girl stepped onto the bus with her usual monotone expression, framed by a few midnight brown curls. Her eyes met Peter’s with a hint of amusement, like someone had just told her a mild joke. Unlike Ned, she wasn’t immediately put off by Loki’s—Leon’s—presence, but was quite curious nonetheless.  
“Good morning, ma’am.” Leon started with a charming smile.  
“Who are you?” MJ motioned for Ned to scoot over, and she sat down, turned so she could converse easily with Peter and his… visitor.  
“Leonard Seppe. Call me Leon.”  
“Hm. Sounds cool. Call me MJ.” She squinted at him, giving his pallid face a once over. “You don’t look Italian.”  
“Yes, well.” He said coolly. “One cannot pick and choose one’s characteristics to match their name. Else, I would assume you’d been named some derivative of Athena.”  
MJ cracked a smile at this, and turned to Peter. “I think me and your friend are gonna get along just fine.”  
Peter let out a tiny sigh of relief.  
“Second cousin,” Ned mumbled more to himself than to anyone. “What IS a second cousin…?”

Arriving at school caused much less of a start from the general school population than it usually did. Flash was too busy staring at the strange raven-like man following Peter around like some kind of silent, brooding dog. And the rest of the crowd essentially saw and thought the same thing: finally, the happy-go-lucky son-of-a-bitch got himself a bodyguard. Normal chatter resumed within thirty seconds of their arrival.  
“Does that always happen?” Loki asked, raising an eyebrow and squinting dangerously at a girl who was giving him an odd look. She raised her eyebrows and looked away quickly.  
Peter was just about to answer when MJ spoke instead. “Well, the space is usually filled with insults from Flash and his cronies. So not only is this normal, it’s a good day.”  
“I see.” Loki sought out the face of the teenage adversary as if looking to steal a slice of lemon meringue pie from Stark’s refrigerator. Flash. ...and his cronies. The name seemed to match a group of kids standing near a locker bay, surrounding one boy in particular who was telling a raucous story that made the other boys nearly collapse with laughter. Some were holding lunch trays with cereal and sandwiches on them. Most had bags of gym gear hanging off their shoulders. All were at least a foot taller than Peter.  
Peter sighed miserably. “I wish you wouldn’t treat me like a child. I can take care of myself, you know.”  
“Yes, indeed. But…” Loki gestured vaguely. “The old rust bucket still has his Training Wheels Protocol.”  
“Rust bucket?” The brown-haired boy laughed. “Is that your nickname for him?”  
Loki tipped his chin upward and made an irate noise. “And what of it?”  
“Nothing,” Peter stifled his chuckles. “It’s just funny. Like Reindeer Games.”  
“Why, you-!”  
“You’re a pretty weird second cousin,” MJ interjected, directing her slightly bemused stare to Loki. “Rust bucket? Training wheels protocol?”  
“Mom’s side.” Peter blurted. “I look more like my dad anyway.”  
“You seem like a functional adult.” The interrogation continued, despite Peter’s flustered efforts to keep the conversation away from his very obvious shadow. (“Look, guys, barbeque chicken pizza for lunch today! Bet it still tastes like prison food!”) “You been helping Aunt May out?”  
“Regrettably, I have not.” They were well on their way to first hour now, after Peter had taken a moment to toss a few textbooks into his locker. Both Ned and MJ carried their books in hand until at least fifth hour, and were ever more eager to do so today. “But in a way I suppose this would be of use to her. If, of course, Peter’s safety and well being are in her best interests.” He paused to look down at MJ and, just for fun, let the seidr shielding his eye color drift away for a split second. She didn’t jump, her own eyes didn’t widen. She didn’t run or ask incredulously if anybody else saw what she had just seen.  
“Peter, I think your cousin’s a demon,” was the only thing she had to say, blatant as ever. “Also, this is my stop. See you, dweeb, in third,” She nodded to Ned, who cheerfully gave a thumbs up, “And see you, dork, in seventh.” Giving a small but genuine smile to Peter and a half wave to Loki, she passed through the oak-bordered doorway into the first period of the day.  
“She’d make a wonderful wife for you, Peter.” The Norse god took a chance at the pink tinge to Peter’s face and the reaction was priceless.  
“You can’t just say that!” Beet red and flipping out, Peter only realized his ‘cousin’ was poking a bit of fun when he saw the man’s shoulders shaking and how thinly he was smiling, surely concealing peals of laughter. “Seriously, what is wrong with you? Who even says that? Make a good wife… what are you, from the dark ages?” This only made Loki let out a few pathetically stifled giggles.  
Ned was laughing, too, although when Peter turned on him he apologized honestly. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, it was funny!”  
Another grating sigh from the boy whose face was mimicking a heavily laden strawberry patch. Today was going to be a very long day indeed.  
Up until lunch, the day was punctuated with short little happenings. The social studies teacher marveled at a medallion Loki seemingly produced from nowhere.  
“This- this has to be at least a thousand years old,” she said in awe. “Have you considered taking it to get it carbon dated? I’m sure you could find someone…”  
“Actually, it’s one thousand seven hundred and fifty four years old. Six months. Ten days.” He tilted his head and smiled at her shocked expression. “Give or take, of course.”  
Peter silently wished his ‘cousin’ would stop showing off, because now Flash was pointedly glaring at him from across the room, and he couldn’t read lips but he was sure whatever the other boy was saying couldn’t be good.  
Keep it calm, Peter told himself. Keep it calm.  
And so he did, when he had to introduce Leonard Seppe another three times, to his art teacher (who was clearly enamored), to his math teacher, who was indifferent, and finally, to his English teacher, after which he ditched Loki at the front of the room to go talk to MJ.  
“Hi.” She said, and then looked past him. “How’s...Leonard?”  
“Fine.” Peter mumbled, tracing the woodgrains on the desk next to her.  
“How are you?” He almost fainted at her gentle hand on his elbow. God, she really cared. Did she? Her face betrayed nothing, but her eyes… like dark chocolate and warm autumn earth, they spoke only goodness. Of course, that might have been the crush speaking.  
“Uhm, uh, I’m… I’m okay.” Curses, she took her hand away! Oh well. Good things never did seem to last for him.  
MJ leaned in almost imperceptibly, which made Peter blink and his heart skip a beat.  
“He’s not really your cousin, is he?”  
“For god’s sake!” Peter smacked his face into his hands. “No, he’s not, he’s a Norse god who’s getting paid by Mr. Stark to follow me around so I don’t come home with any more bruises than I usually get from falling down the stairs because I’m such a helpless child, aren’t I? I’m absolutely unable to do ANYTHING myself!”  
MJ nodded solemnly. “I knew it.”  
Peter peeked at her from between his fingers and sighed fiercely. “Knew what?”  
“He’s not your cousin.”  
Peter’s head hit the desk with a resounding thump.  
MJ rested her head on the desk, speaking right into his ear at her normal monotone volume. “I know it’s really stressful. But it’s the last period of the day, so we’re almost free, right? It’s just a one day thing.”  
Peter let out a groan that was muffled by the oak desk. “That’s the thing. I don’t know if he’s supposed to stay for a day, or a week, or.. .or forever! I mean- I like him and all, but wasn’t the point to keep me safe? I don’t think me being the class spectacle twenty-four-seven is going to make Flash very happy.”  
“Maybe not.” MJ conceded. “You are kind of stealing his thunder. But Flash isn’t a brat, he’s just… an instigator. A pest. Likes to get under your skin.” She paused to look at him, squinting her autumn brown eyes. “A tick. A roach. Some other buggish thing.”  
“I guess you’re right.” Back to tracing the woodgrain and sneaking glances at the clock. Almost there. Almost over.

Peter closed his locker as quietly as he could, noticing the tick, the roach narrowing its eyes at him in the corner. He had escaped silently from his last class because Loki and Ned were enthusiastically chatting with the teacher, and MJ had been merciful enough to let him go. Well, she knew he was making an escape, and not just leaving. He supposed that’s what he saw in her troubled brown eyes.  
The school halls were mostly populated with chatting bus students. It was, after all, still early. He still had time to get out unnoticed - or rather, unscathed. But it was apparently a feat beyond words and actions that no one, not even the fastest man on earth could accomplish. Peter felt his heart drop to his stomach when he realized the exit hall he normally took was dead and empty.  
“Hey,” said the voice. Lead broiled in his stomach as he turned to face Flash. Peter put on his best I’m-Dumb-And-Happy-Don’t-Hurt-Me smile and stared into the roach’s cold brown eyes.  
“Yes?” Peter asked, after a moment of silence. Flash half-smirked.  
“So you talk. Kinda petty to ignore me, don’t you think?”  
“No, I don’t think so.” He edged closer to the wall that wasn’t bordered with lockers, but Flash mirrored his move.  
“No? Well. I think so.” The roach stepped closer. “And how about MJ, huh?”  
“What about her?” Peter stepped back toward the locker side and swore internally when Flash did the same.  
“Pretty, isn’t she.” A dull statement, as demonstrated by the way Flash’s eyes were suddenly half-lidded with boredom. But they swiftly lit back up again. “You know how you look at her.”  
“Are you MJ’s stalker, or something?” Peter was intimidated, but also genuinely confused by Flash’s lilting speech. It seemed a little too much like a villain’s monologue.  
Flash sighed through his teeth, took two strides forward and slammed his fist into the locker closest to Peter’s head. Hard enough to make the kid jump, but soft enough to not hurt his hand. The roach’s dead eyes remained.  
“What I’m trying to say is that you’re a lowlife,” He droned on. “I’m saying you’re an incompetent freak. I’m saying you’re so anxious and yippy and high maintenance that you’re like a whole ‘nother girl.”  
Peter gulped.  
“You’re sensitive,” Flash crooned. “And nerdy. And the only person in this entire school who clearly resembles a doormat.”  
“So?” Peter scoffed, unwilling to give into the fingers prying open crevices in his mind that housed insecurities.  
“So you lost Liz by being a complete dimwit, despite your book smarts.” Flash seemed so much taller, suddenly. Peter felt his knees twitch. Or were they shaking? “And you’ll fuck it up with MJ, too. She’s already mine. Understood?”  
The roach hammered the locker once more, and Peter gave the smallest nod possible, staring burning holes into his binder. It was expected that from here, Flash would laugh and walk away knowing he felt better about gaining an unwilling girlfriend and making Peter feel just a little less competent than he already felt. However, that was not quite the case.  
“What the-?”  
The roach’s hand was stuck to the locker he’d been hammering. A thick, blocky layer of ice sparkled like blue china in the dim light of the hall. Flash’s hand was suspended there, arm cranked up at an almost uncomfortable height.  
The cold brown eyes which had been previously unfeeling were now betraying little pinpricks of fear and confusion, as Peter imagined his own must have some thirty seconds ago.  
“What is this?” Flash shouted. “What the hell did you do? How?”  
A single snowflake fell to the ground by Flash’s feet. Peter could have sworn he heard a little laugh, like a tinkling bell, as it did so.  
“Interesting,” He said bemusedly at this great misfortune.  
“Parker!” Flash barked. “Why’s it so goddamned cold? Are you making it fucking snow?”  
Peter smiled his pleasant smile, shrugged his shoulders, and walked away.  
“Wait!” The roach screamed incessantly. “Wait! Augh, forget what I said, MJ’s all yours! Fine! Just- HELP ME!” The snow was piling up, furiously, around his ankles now.

Just around the corner, Peter met MJ and Loki, one standing nonchalantly though with an air of frustration, and the other in his Jotunn form, fingers orchestrating a little concert of snowflakes that were sent to torture Flash.  
Peter cleared his throat, and both of them looked at him. “Hi.”  
Loki snapped his fingers and the screaming ceased. Flash ran around the corner, murderous and fearful eyes searching for Peter, but when they met with the towering china-blue figure whose red eyes were gleaming with malice even brighter than his own, he turned the other way and booked it down the hall.  
“Indeed, hello.” The raven-haired god shifted back into his less-intimidating human disguise. “Are you alright?”  
Peter grit his teeth, but ultimately relaxed, remembering that these were his friends. MJ looked at him with an emotion he couldn’t—or didn’t want to—read.  
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said. “Sorry for ignoring you guys. I guess I, uh, can’t really hold my own.” Peter gave a sharp laugh, and then his face softened. “No, I’m really sorry. I just… I don’t know. I feel like I should be able to take care of myself. That’s… yeah. I’m sorry for ignoring you.”  
MJ and Loki shared a look, and turned to their friend.  
“Quite alright,” Loki said with a little laugh. “I’m irritating to a fault. Even so to my closest friend.”  
“And at least you’re not, like, riddled with toxic masculinity.” MJ blinked at him slowly, smiling halfway and looking for all the world like the most beautiful girl Peter had ever seen. “You’re in tune with your feelings. Keep it. That’s… good.”  
“Thanks.” Peter said honestly, and sighed with a smile. “Can we go home? I got a lot of calculus homework today and have to make it before-” He almost slipped up, but Loki rested a cold palm on his shoulder. “Yes, we can go home. Worry not.”  
MJ checked her watch. “Well, hope you two like running, the bus is about to leave and I’m sure Ned’s already exhausted Mr. Lee with his detailed retelling of today’s events.”  
“Oh, Lord,” Peter groaned, and the trio broke out into an awkward sprint to make the bus back to the inner city.

**Author's Note:**

> Do tell me if you liked it, if you didn't, and if you did/didn't, then why - I love hearing from you! Any continuity errors you noticed? Any grammar mistakes? Wrong word somewhere? Better-writing suggestions? Throw em at me, I'll eat em up! Thank you so so so much for reading, as always, and have a good night!


End file.
